


Once Upon a Time, They Lived Happily Ever After

by stillscape



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 21:36:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben writes a fairy tale meta of his own life, basically. Set in season 5 but also covers "The Master Plan" to "Harvest Festival." Also, wedding night fluff/smut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time, They Lived Happily Ever After

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to diaphenia, ashisfriendly, iloveyouandilikeyou, craponaspatula, and anyone else I might be leaving out...

* * * * * * 

“Les, they didn’t look _that_ bad.”

Even from all the way on the other side of a crowded JJ’s, Ann’s voice sounded uncertain. Ben caught sight of his fiancée and her maid of honor and waved, which Ann noticed but Leslie, who was scowling mightily at the screen of Ann’s cell phone, didn’t. She followed Ann across the diner, simultaneously swiping across the touchscreen, looking more and more put out. Her hair, Ben noticed, was more disheveled now than it ever was when she woke up in the morning. 

“They did. They all did,” Leslie insisted. She automatically slid into Ann’s side of the booth, then looked up, blinked, and quickly switched sides. “Hi, honey.” 

“Hi.” He gave her leg a squeeze under the table, and asked the question, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer already. “Did you find a dress?”

In response, Leslie thrust Ann’s phone into his line of vision. 

He instinctively recoiled. Had Leslie been swallowed by an evil, bedazzled meringue? “What is _that_?”

“ _That_ ,” Leslie said, “is a princess gown.” 

“Good lord.” 

“It’s not that bad,” Ann said again, but she withered under the combined disbelieving stares that came from the opposite side of the table. “Okay,” she conceded. “It is that bad.” 

“There are others,” Leslie informed Ben, and she swiped through a number of pictures. “Look at this one. Or this one. I think this one is bigger than the Newport mansion....” 

“Did you try on… _not_ princess gowns?” He’d seen an episode or two of that horrible wedding dress show, and the combination of price tags and hysteria had been enough to give him nightmares. But he knew, at least, that other styles of dress existed, and were probably less overwhelming. 

A waitress approached their table, nodded, and kept going. 

Ann shook her head. “That’s about all they had. I think we might have to go to Indy.” 

“I’m so sick of the fairy tale wedding thing,” Leslie complained. “I mean, I know we’ve barely started planning, but so far everyone we’ve talked to—the caterers, cake people, the tent rentals—everyone keeps asking if it’s a fairy tale wedding! Do you know how many times I’ve rented tents from that vendor? They _know_ me. I rent a lot of tents for Parks events, Ann!”

“I know you do,” said Ann, soothingly. 

“Even my mom asked if we were having a fairy tale wedding.” 

“A lot of women want that, Leslie.” 

“Well, I don’t,” she said, grumpily, just as the waitress returned with coffee. 

Ann stared at the table, and blinked twice. “Ben, did you order for us?” 

“No.” He turned to Leslie, who was still swiping furiously through the slideshow of overwhelming gowns. “What’s wrong with a fairy tale wedding?” He knew the answer, of course, but venting was bound to help. 

“Okay, it’s not the fairy tale part so much as the princess part,” she conceded, pouring half the sugar jar into her coffee. “Everyone keeps asking if I want to be a princess. I don’t. Off the top of your head, name a single princess fairy tale in which the princess doesn’t just sit around waiting for stuff to happen, Ben.” 

“Cinderella worked pretty hard,” he offered. 

“She wasn’t a princess at that point. And she only _gets_ to be a princess because her fairy godmother waves a wand at her.” 

Ann chimed in. “Beauty and the Beast?” Leslie shook her head, though. 

“That one’s better, but come on, Ann. When people think of princess weddings, they mean, like…Sleeping Beauty. She’s asleep through most of the story! Or Snow White. I just don’t want—”

“To be associated with women who lie around in comas waiting for princes to kiss them. I know, Les. We had this conversation last week, remember?” 

Leslie finally handed Ann’s phone back to her. “And aside from that, those dresses look terrible on me.” 

“They were a bit much. But we’ll find you something.” 

The waitress arrived back at their booth, and presented them with a grilled chicken salad, a club sandwich, and a waffle with extra whipped cream. 

“Thank you,” Leslie said, quickly dumping all the whipped cream on her waffle at once. 

Ann looked a bit confused. “Do we all really order the same thing every time?” 

Ben shrugged, and they began eating. 

The thing was, in some ways the whole thing really _did_ feel like a fairy tale. Leslie was right, of course—there was no way she was a fairy tale princess, waiting for her prince to come. And there was no way he was the dashing, handsome prince, either. _Disgraced_ prince, maybe, if he thought about his past…or traveling…accountant. Whatever the medieval equivalent of a budget auditor was. Keeper of the coffers of the biggest kingdom…

Pawnee _did_ feel like it existed in a weird, magical bubble sometimes; there was no denying that. And—he glanced over at Leslie’s ring finger, currently covered in whipped cream—he _was_ getting a happily ever after. 

“Ben. Earth to Ben,” said Ann, waving a hand in front of his face. 

He snapped to attention. 

“Next weekend. I’m taking Leslie shopping in Indianapolis. Objections?” 

“Nope,” he said. 

Leslie licked the whipped cream off her ring finger. 

He’d been wondering what he could get her as a wedding present. Not that it was strictly necessary. They would have each other, after all, and the honeymoon. But something small, meaningful… 

And now he knew. 

He popped a French fry into his mouth, and made a mental note to contact Leslie’s _Groffle the Awful Waffle_ publisher as soon as possible. 

Damn it, it was his fairy tale and he wanted to be the prince.

* * * * * * 

Sitting down to actually write the thing felt weird. It wasn’t a question of where to begin, exactly. _Once upon a time_ was the beginning; he could hardly start a fairy tale any other way.

So, _Once upon a time…_

And then what?

_Once upon a time…they lived happily ever after._

Maybe taking a walk would help. 

Maybe getting a beer would help. 

Maybe he needed to bounce ideas off of someone. Yes. He’d start there. 

“What do you want?” 

Instantly, he regretted calling April. She was his best option, though. He sighed. Which face was she going to make when he told her what he wanted? Would she roll her eyes at him? Give him the disgusted grimace? Or would this merely warrant a steely, unrelenting stare? 

“I need help with a project.” 

“Make Leslie help you.”

“No, I can’t. It’s a wedding present for her.” 

“Make anyone else help you.”

Eye roll. Not that it mattered, since he couldn’t see her.

“I can’t trust anyone else with this project,” he said, hoping that a secret might be ample enough bait. 

Nothing but silence came from the other end of the line. 

“April?”

“I’m listening.” 

“Okay. I’m…I’m rewriting our relationship as a fairy tale.” Out loud, he thought, it sounded faintly ridiculous. Possibly very ridiculous. April must have thought so too. Or maybe she didn’t. He _still_ couldn’t always tell with her. 

“Ew,” she said. Disgusted grimace now, probably—and yeah, she thought it was ridiculous. “You’re writing one of those gross Star Trek porn stories about yourself?”

The short hairs at the back of his neck prickled. “No, I’m not. I’m fictionalizing part of our real lives. If I was doing a self-insertion into fan fiction—which I _wouldn’t_ , by the way—then that would be called either a Mary Sue or a Marty Stu—and not all fan fiction is _porn_ , either—”

April let out a short yelp. “Oh, my god, Ben. Shut up.” 

“Sorry.” The yelp had, most unpleasantly, jostled a vision of Leslie in one of Commander Troi’s plunging necklines out of his brain. He tried to return to envisioning Leslie in some sort of…well, not a princess dress, anyway. 

As if she could read his mind, April blurted out, “I don’t think Leslie wants to be a princess.” 

“Yeah, I know. She won’t be.” 

“So why exactly did you call me?” 

“I need help brainstorming.” 

April groaned, then fell silent. Had she hung up?

“Are you thinking, or—”

“It’s a fairy tale,” she said, finally. “You start with ‘once upon a time’—”

“Yeah, I _have_ that.”

“And then if it’s your real life, just write that, but with…I don’t know. Dragons and stuff. And you have to turn people into other things, like trolls and witches. Ooh, make Ann a witch.” 

“I’m not going to make Ann a witch.” 

“Hey.” 

“Hmm?”

“This is the lamest idea you’ve ever had.” 

“I know.” 

“And who knew you could get even lamer? It’s almost sort of impressive.”

“I know.” 

“But Leslie’s going to love it,” April said, in a quiet voice. Then she hung up. 

Right. 

Real life, but with…dragons and stuff.

* * * * * * 

__  
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a young prince in a small kingdom. Like all princes, he hoped that someday, he might rule wisely and well.

_However, “someday” came much sooner than the prince—or indeed anyone else—expected._

_His kingdom was a northern one, with cold and bitter winters. Far from wishing for warmer climes, the small folk enjoyed outdoor activities throughout the blustery months. Skiing, skating, snowball fights, and ice fishing were amongst the most beloved pastimes. Desiring the approval of his people, the young prince decided that he would ensure they could enjoy the games of winter, even when the sun blazed bright and the breeze blew warm._

_There was only one way to create winter during the summer, and that was to employ an ice-breathing dragon._

_“Don’t do it,” the prince’s advisers warned him. “Yes, with a dragon, permanent winter will come. But it will come at a terrible cost.”_

_“Nonsense,” said the prince, who arrogantly believed he knew more than his counsel. “The cost is not too great. Winter is coming.” And he lured an ice dragon to his kingdom._

_But he had failed to consider the appetite of an ice dragon, and soon, the dragon had consumed all of the kingdom’s gold, leaving no money for roads or schools or helping the poor. Anger rightly grew in the kingdom, and the young prince was banished. Embarrassed, humbled, he resolved that he would learn how to manage the money of a kingdom, that he might one day return to power and prove himself capable of ruling responsibly._

_The prince moved south, where few people knew of his failures, and took a job traveling from kingdom to kingdom, assisting kings and queens and town councils with the management of their gold. After several years’ labor, he grew bitter. Though most rulers were not as foolish as he had been, many of them were awfully foolish, and the prince often found it difficult to hold his tongue._

_And he felt, always, the ice dragon lurking in shadows behind him._

_One day, a particularly foolish king proclaimed that he would have the prince’s head on a spike. The prince, fearing for his life, decided to flee._

_On his journey, he stopped at an inn. There he met another manager of gold, a…_

* * * * * * 

“April?” He put her on speakerphone, so that he could type with both hands if she came up with anything brilliant. “I need some story advice—”

“Make Ann a witch,” she said, immediately. 

“I’m not going to do that.” 

“Fine. What do you want?” 

“Who or what is Chris?” 

“What?”

“What should I make Chris into? Most fairy tale creatures are hideous monsters.” Now that he’d said it out loud, he kind of wanted to make Chris a hideous monster—just to see what would happen. It would be profoundly out of character, though. 

He could hear the phone shifting against April’s ear. “Well, what are you?” 

“I’m the prince.” 

“Ew. No, you’re not.”

Ben realized the top of his head hurt, possibly because he now seemed to be yanking all his hair out. He forced his clenched left fist to relax. “Yeah, I know, but it’s my story. I get to be the prince.”

“Congratulations. Now you sound like a toddler.” 

“Are you going to help me with this or not?”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m busy doing other stuff, Ben. Did you ever think of that? Maybe I don’t have time to write a story for you.” 

“Good lord,” he spat. “Sorry. You don’t have to help me with this.” 

There was a moment of silence, and then a sigh crackled through the speaker. “A robot. Make Chris a robot.”

Now it was Ben’s turn to sigh. “There aren’t robots in fairy tales.”

This sparked an unreasonably long argument about robots, in which April countered the irrefutable fact that robots weren’t in fairy tales by repeatedly yelling about _those weird daVinci machine things_.

Maybe it was a good point. Maybe April had heard the _my body is a microchip_ claim nearly as often as he had—no, she hadn’t. (That didn’t make the comparison any less valid, but there was no possible way she’d heard _my body is a microchip_ as often as he had.) But Ben was determined not to give in, because _robots weren’t in fairy tales_. 

Eventually, they came to a creative consensus. April agreed with him that Chris would make a passable knight in shining armor, if they ignored the somewhat obvious fact that armor made jogging, swimming, and cycling impossible. If anyone could do those things in armor, Chris could. 

Not that he really needed to be striving for realism. 

“Besides,” he said, reasonably, “a fairy tale wouldn’t even have a triathlon. Cycling hadn’t been invented yet.”

“Ugh, why do you know that?” Before he could answer, April had hung up. Then she texted him to insist, again, that Ann should be a witch. 

As compensation for the loss of his bicycle, Ben decided to give Chris a fine, handsome steed. He would name it…Wheatgrass. No, Johan Bruyneel. No, Wheatgrass.

* * * * * * 

_On his journey, he stopped at an inn. There he met another manager of gold, a handsome and charming knight with a dazzling smile. They decided to share a meal, and over a large bowl of fresh salad greens, the knight explained to the prince that, although he was the bravest of knights and although he sincerely wanted to help kings and queens balance their budgets, he was not always brave enough to deliver difficult news._

_“It’s very stressful,” he said. “Sometimes I have to excuse myself from the castle, and gallop Wheatgrass about the fields until I feel happy again.”_

_“That’s funny,” said the prince. “I have the opposite problem.” And he explained about the king who had threatened to have his head on a spike._

_The handsome, charming knight clapped a hand to the prince’s shoulder. “Friend,” he said, “I just had literally the greatest idea in the history of this land. You and I should travel together, and share our workloads. Two heads are often better than one.”_

_Although it was not literally the greatest idea the prince had ever heard, it was a _pretty_ good idea. So he agreed, and together, the disgraced prince and the handsome knight began roaming the land. _

_Working with the knight was less efficient than working alone, but there was something to be said for company, and for the cessation of threats to have his head on a spike. They traveled through every corner of the land: kingdoms with only eight people, remote kingdoms reliant on farming, kingdoms known for their institutions of higher learning._

_Despite all their efforts, things seemed much the same. In kingdom after kingdom, they found corruption, greed, mismanagement, laziness, and apathy. This did not bother the knight, who continued to insist that everywhere was special and people were really good at heart. It did bother the prince. After eleven years’ traveling, he was ever more certain that all kingdoms were essentially the same—and therefore not special at all—and that most people were selfish, self-interested, and cared little for helping others._

_And though the knight swore they were not being followed, still the prince felt his ice dragon lurking in shadows behind him._

_One day, they were handed an official scroll. Once unrolled, it revealed that they had been called to the kingdom of Pawnee. So off they went, to the south, past the kingdom of Bloomington, to a land where the air smelled faintly of burnt sugar and the battered city walls housed colonies of frighteningly large raccoons._

_“Oh, dear,” said the knight, as they rode past a banner proclaiming_ First in Friendship, Fourth in Obesity _. “This doesn’t seem promising. But—we will have an excellent opportunity to teach the local folk about nutrition and exercise! Isn’t that right, Wheatgrass?”_

_Wheatgrass tossed his mane and pranced. The prince, plodding behind them on his reliable, unexcited mule, said nothing._

_By this time, the knight and the prince had a very well-established routine. The charming, handsome knight would go to different wings of the castle, greeting the men and women of the kingdom’s support staff. The prince always accompanied him, but rarely spoke; being friendly with support staff at the outset only would only make it more difficult when he had to dismiss them from the castle’s employ._

_As they moved from wing to wing, introducing themselves, the prince decided that Pawnee Castle was just another ordinary stone structure, albeit one with unusually gruesome hanging tapestries._

_At long last, they came to the final department, which was called Gardens and Outdoor Amusements. The prince followed the knight into the antechamber…_

* * * * * * 

How was he supposed to write _meeting Leslie_ , though? What words were there to describe the significance of an event that had, at the time, seemed utterly mundane and inconsequential?

Maybe, he thought, it was time to stop for the day. He checked his watch. Was it really that late? Keeping track of time was so much more difficult without a job and a concrete schedule. Leslie would be home soon, and he’d have to think of a reason he hadn’t gotten more wedding planning done. 

Ben took his iPad from the office to the living room and stretched out on the couch, determined to recall that memory as precisely as possible. There might have been emails between him and Chris, but had he thought to forward them before his government email account was shut down? No, damn it; he hadn’t. 

Asking Chris might be a bit awkward. 

Instead, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut and tried to remember every last detail. 

He hadn’t been in a very good mood at the time; he remembered that much. 

Something had smelled funny, which—he decided now, in retrospect—had probably been Jerry, or at least Jerry-related. 

He’d been standing behind Chris, as usual, and thinking about how much he wished Chris wouldn’t put such an absurdly positive spin on the dire budget situation, as usual, and…well, he’d probably shaken hands with Leslie at some point, but he couldn’t say for sure. 

He definitely remembered the Parks department conference room, later in the day, when he’d pegged Leslie as one of those unreasonably stubborn types, someone who would fail to see the forest for the trees—an unfortunate assessment, though not entirely unfair—and then she’d snapped at him and he’d gathered his things and retreated. But again, that wasn’t an unusual occurrence, and he hadn’t thought much about it at the time. Certainly he’d been snapped at by plenty of mid-level government bureaucrats before. 

Upon returning to the temporary office he shared with Chris, he’d had two specific thoughts. One was that Ms. Knope, testy and irritating though she was, had been kind of cute; the other was that whether or not she was cute was completely irrelevant to the job he had to do, and he might as well put it out of his mind. 

And so he’d put it out of his mind.

Temporarily. 

And the other question was, in this fairy tale world, what was Leslie? Not a princess. 

He thought a little further ahead—to the children’s concert, to the endless string of meeting requests, to...everything, really. 

Mentally, Ben swapped out the Parks department’s wooden walls for stone, changed the window behind April’s desk from an ordinary pane to stained glass, and mounted a large battle axe on Ron’s door. 

It was iPad time.

* * * * * * 

_At long last, they came to the final department, which was called Gardens and Outdoor Amusements. The prince followed the knight into the antechamber, and soon enough, he was seated in a smaller chamber, examining scroll upon scroll of financial records. Seated across from him were two people. One, the hearty woodsman who was in charge of Gardens and Outdoor Amusements, seemed delighted. The other was a petite blonde woman, the Deputy Director of Gardens and Outdoor Amusements, and she was—the prince quickly realized—not the slightest bit delighted. In fact, she seemed very, very angry at him._

_However, he knew he hadn’t caused the kingdom of Pawnee’s problems; its rulers had. And he had dealt with plenty of angry public servants before. This one, he told himself, would be no different._

_Far back, in the deepest part of the prince’s mind, a small voice told him that this public servant might, in fact, be different. But he also thought that the small voice might be his ice dragon. So he ignored it as best he could, and when the public servant began speaking much more loudly than the dragon ever had, he tried to ignore her too._

_The way to win a kingdom was to be cautious, prudent, and scrupulous. He had learned that the hard way. And she would have to learn it too._

_“I didn’t cause these problems, my lady; the rulers of your kingdom did.”_

_“You’re a jerk.”_

_The prince glanced up; for a moment, he thought his icy dragon had been replaced by a fiery one._

_“The kingdom of Pawnee is no different from any other.”_

_But she insisted that it was. “This is a real kingdom,” she spat, “with real people, in a real castle, with real feelings.”_

_“The castle has feelings?” asked the prince, before he could stop himself._

_“Perhaps. This castle holds a great deal of history.”_

_The prince decided he could get the information he needed from the parchment scrolls alone. He gathered everything up and left the antechamber, her blistering stare hot on the back of his neck._

_On his way back to his temporary office chambers, he passed a hanging tapestry that depicted an encounter between the kingdom’s founders and the ancient peoples who had previously occupied the land. The handiwork was impressive, he had to admit. Never had he seen gushing blood rendered in such exquisite detail._

_The floor creaked ominously under his feet as he began walking again, and he wondered whether she hadn’t been right about the castle._

* * * * * * 

The door opened, and Ben hastily saved his document and turned the iPad off, reminding himself not to get _too_ wrapped up in embellishment.

“I’m home!” Leslie called. She appeared in the living room a moment later, sans coat and shoes but pink-cheeked from the cold. 

“Hi.” 

“Hi yourself,” she said, pressing her frigid nose into his before she kissed him. 

“Did you walk home? You’re freezing.” 

She shook her head. “No, I was just carrying in stuff from my car. I brought home all the minutes from all the city council meetings that have ever discussed women and employment.” 

“Why didn’t you call me? I would’ve come out and helped.” 

Leslie’s nose scrunched up. “Unfortunately, those minutes fit in a single binder. With a lot of room to spare. The subject hasn’t come up very often.” She let out a huge sigh, momentarily sagging before perking back up. “I think I might write a newspaper op-ed about how few women are employed in Pawnee’s government. What would be a good headline? I was thinking about starting it with _Why so many Y chromosomes_ , but maybe not, because people might read it in a Batman voice.”

“Joker,” Ben corrected, automatically, before a memory struck him. “You know, I compiled data on employment statistics, actually, way back when Chris and I were trying to make cuts. It’s probably still relevant. There hasn’t been much turnover since the initial cutbacks.” 

“Oh, my god. Can you find it?” 

“I think so. Well--I mean, I don’t have access to it anymore, but Chris should be able to get it for you.” 

“You’re awesome,” she said, eyes sparkling. “What have you been doing?” 

“Not much. Just thinking about stuff.” 

“Like what?” 

A job. He probably should have been thinking about a job, really. But… “When we first met.” 

Leslie raised an eyebrow. “You were thinking about that all day?” 

“Not all day.” He decided to change the subject. “Why are you so cold, if you only had one binder to bring in from the car?”

“Groceries,” Leslie said, beckoning him to the door. “You can help carry those in if you want.” 

“Did you get something for dinner?” 

There was indeed a pile of grocery bags inside the door. Most of them just held whipped cream and cookie dough, though. 

“No,” Leslie admitted. “Want to go to JJ’s? Oh! And guess what Ann did!”

He shrugged, and started carrying groceries into the kitchen. 

“She found a local tailor who does custom dresses. Wedding dresses. And we met with her today and she’s awesome and I’m hiring her to make my dress.”

“So you won’t be dressed like a cupcake?”

“Not telling,” Leslie said, with a sly little smile. “You’re not supposed to know anything about the dress in advance.” 

“I thought that was just—I thought I wasn’t supposed to see it on you before the ceremony.” 

Leslie shook her head. “No, you’re not supposed to see _me_ on the day of the wedding—that’s the superstition—but I decided I wanted the dress to be a surprise. So I’m not going to tell you anything else about it. I mean, she hasn’t started making it yet, but we pretty much agreed on a design already.” 

A thought occurred to Ben, and he paused halfway through unloading cookie dough into the fridge. “That’s kind of perfect, huh? Having your dress made in Pawnee?” 

“It’s really perfect. It’s going to be really perfect. She has all these ideas about lace, and—crap. Ben, don’t let me talk about the dress, okay?” 

“I can’t wait to see it,” he said—realizing, as the words left his mouth, that May was, in fact, entirely too far away. _Leslie_ wasn’t very far away, though. Before Ben could even blink, she’d pressed herself against him, forehead tucked under his chin. She stayed there for a moment, entirely still. 

“Me either,” she said, so quietly he could barely hear her. Then she stepped back, drew a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and gestured towards the door. “Come on, let’s go eat. I’m starving.” 

A couple of hours later, after they’d returned from dinner, he wandered in from the kitchen and found Leslie curled up on the sofa with her city council binders, diligently cross-checking men’s and women’s salaries throughout the 1980s, a yellow highlighter clenched in her teeth. 

Casually, he grabbed his iPad and sauntered out of the living room before Leslie registered that he’d been there in the first place, intending to get a few hundred words in before bedtime. 

But he’d forgotten how few city council records there were to go through. Before he’d done more than edit a couple of paragraphs, Leslie had joined him in the bedroom they’d set up as an office. 

“You look like you’re ready for a fight,” he said, noting her rolled-up sleeves and messy bun. 

“I’m _very_ ready.” She took a deep breath. “Want to hear my opening remarks?” 

“Of course.” 

They were better than his story, but he’d been expecting that.

* * * * * * 

As it turned out, the hardest thing about Ben’s secret project was keeping it secret, a fact he felt he probably ought to have predicted. It wasn’t that Leslie didn’t respect the “private” folder on his iPad—she did—it was that he really, desperately wanted to tell her about the story.

And he was having a few problems with characterization, here and there. But mostly, it was just hard not to tell Leslie about it, in part because he was pretty sure it would be fun to work on the project _with_ her. And because it would be nice to have her take on the events of that first summer, the hours they’d spent arguing over budgets and services—because really, how was he supposed to make all that _interesting_?

And sometimes the whole project felt stupidly juvenile, or flat-out silly. A little encouragement would have been nice. 

But no. It was going to be a surprise, a well thought-out one this time, instead of his usual impulsive surprises. 

He did have April on his side—though whether she was more of a help or a hindrance, he couldn’t quite say. One night she called him, rather unexpectedly, in the middle of a _Law & Order_ repeat, and immediately hissed something about _the story_. At least Sam Waterston was enough to keep Leslie distracted while he snuck into the next room. 

“I changed my mind,” she announced. 

“What?”

“Don’t make Ann a witch. Witches are awesome. Make me a witch instead.” 

“I already made Ann a witch!” he hissed. “Because you told me to!”

“So change that part. Make Ann something lame. Make her the tooth fairy.” 

There was no way he was going to make Ann the _tooth fairy_. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The tooth fairy is lame and so is Ann.”

“She’s a nurse, not a dental hygienist.” 

“God, stop being so literal!” April huffed. “Think about it. I’d make a way better witch than she would.” 

“Ben?” Leslie called. “I’m going to make popcorn. Do you want any?” 

“Yeah, okay,” he called back. “Be right there. Listen—” he muttered into the phone, “we’ll have to talk about this later, okay?” 

“Fine. Go write your stupid story.” She hung up on him, as usual. But seconds later, he had a text. _Wizard of Oz_ , it said. _Two witches_.

That…actually kind of made sense. 

_You’re cool with being green, right?_ he wrote back. 

A few seconds later, he received _Andy wants to be a flying monkey._

He didn’t have time to hide his phone before Leslie snuck up behind him, carrying two bowls of popcorn. “What’s going on in here?” she asked. 

Well, the last text was fairly innocuous. Still, he fumbled the phone, shoving it in his pocket. “Nothing. Just—stuff. You know. Secret—secret wedding stuff.” 

“At this time of night?” Leslie mused, but she didn’t pursue it further, possibly because she tended to do all of _her_ secret wedding stuff at this time of night, or sometimes at three in the morning. 

Ben barely paid attention to the rest of _Law & Order_. He was too busy picturing Ann with blonde ringlets, which—if he was being honest—was not a very flattering image. 

Well, he didn’t have to be _that_ literal. Even a brunette Glinda made a lot more sense than the tooth fairy. And Leslie would appreciate Ann as a beautiful witch. He’d have to get pictures. Who could illustrate the damn thing? A tiny voice in the back of his mind sent forth the word _Jerry_ , and Ben flinched. No, Jerry would be a disaster. Although...no.

Yeah, Jerry had proven himself all too capable of painting Leslie’s portrait. But he’d never be able to keep the project a secret. Jerry would spill the beans, Ben was sure of it. 

Anyway, he needed to finish writing the story before he started looking for an illustrator. And first he needed to do some editing, make sure the handsome knight hadn’t just started dating the tooth fairy. 

“Did you want to watch something else?” Leslie asked, when a second episode started and he pulled out the iPad. 

“No, go ahead. I’ve, uh...I’ve seen this one before.” 

He did a quick search-and-replace for “tooth fairy,” then spent the subsequent episode typing surreptitiously, awkwardly contorted on the couch so Leslie couldn’t see his iPad screen.

* * * * * * 

__  
An illness swept through the kingdom. Even the handsome knight, usually immune to all manners of disease, fell victim.

_The very day that the deputy director was due to give a speech to all the town’s merchants, the illness struck her too._

_“I can do it,” she insisted. “You have to let me give the speech.”_

_The prince placed a hand to her forehead. It was burning up; there was no way she could go in front of the merchants. So he ignored her protests and deposited her in the care of her best friend, the beautiful good witch._

_On his way out of the witch’s lair, he passed the wicked witch, also a victim of the influenza, her skin a paler green than usual._

_It was going to be a long day. Before she fell ill, the deputy director had designated her associate, Rumpelstiltskin, to aid in the presentation, but now Rumplestiltskin was nowhere to be found. He walked past Gardens and Outdoor Amusements several times anyway, and saw nought but the hearty woodsman roasting a haunch of meat with the flying monkey from the cobbler’s stand._

_Hours later, as he prepared to address the town merchants by himself, he turned to find the deputy director._

_“Walk very carefully,” she informed him, a look of wonder on her face. “The floor and the wall just switched.”_

_She was, clearly, still very ill._

_“You need to go back to—” he started, but she held up a hand to silence him. He shook his head and pressed on. “I’ve done this kind of presentation before. I’m not going to mess it up.”_

_She strode in front of the merchants anyway._

_“Relax,” said Rumpelstiltskin, who had appeared out of nowhere. But the prince’s heart was in his throat as he watched the deputy director take the lectern and pull herself up an inch._

_He needn’t have worried._

_As she spoke, a very strange feeling came over the prince. It seemed that a sort of light was emanating from the deputy director, bathing her skin in a golden glow. Perhaps the glow was caused by the heat from her fever, but he didn’t think so, because suddenly—magically—she seemed the picture of health. She was poised, eloquent, charming. A glance over the merchants told him he himself wasn’t hallucinating from fever; they were seeing the same thing he was, and they were equally impressed._

_At the end of the evening, after Rumpelstiltskin had taken her back to the good witch’s lair, the prince wandered through a mostly empty marketplace, on his way back to his inn. The strange feeling hadn’t left him. Stranger still, he didn’t really want it to. It was, he thought, kind of a nice feeling._

_Whenever he had been ill as a young boy, his mother would shoo the cooks from the royal kitchens, pull out her oldest family recipe, and make a soup that she claimed was magic, though he knew now it never had been. It had simply been very good soup. He wasn’t at all sure he could reproduce the soup well, but he knew he could at least make something edible. So the next morning, he took a small flagon of his best effort to the witch’s lair along with some fresh waffled bread, hoping he would find the deputy director alert and well._

_She was still confined to bed, but she smiled at him from the doorway. Though the strange feeling hadn’t left him since last night, it surged more strongly._

_As the deputy director pressed him for details about the previous evening, and grew pleased at his answers, he finally realized what the strange feeling was. It was the odd kind of pleasure that came with being proven wrong about something you had never really wanted to believe._

_Not all kingdoms were the same after all, he thought, and not all the public servants contained in them were the same either. Some public servants were devoted, kind, and hard-working. They cared deeply about their work, and their community, and the people they counted as friends. Clearly, the deputy director cared more about those things than anyone the prince had ever met._

_At that moment (and in many moments to follow) the prince couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel for her to care that deeply about him, too._

_Slowly, the prince began to change--though, like most princes in most stories, he initially failed to notice._

_As the weeks passed, and their plans for the festival began to take concrete form, the prince found himself drawn more and more to the devoted public servant. Granted, they were collaborating very closely now, but soon he realized that he was finding excuses to labor in her chambers rather than his own, and that he was seeking her opinions more often than strictly necessary._

_She seemed not to mind. Sometimes, he let himself imagine that she even welcomed his company. He had no evidence to the contrary._

_By now, he had taken careful note of the way she moved; always with purpose, towards her goal. He had also observed, at a level of detail he desperately hoped was not inappropriate, each shade of blue her eyes contained, and how they changed in the sunlight. He knew exactly how she tilted her head back when she smiled and how she scrunched her nose and bit her lip in frustration._

_One day the public servant asked him to discuss the festival with the all the town criers._

_The first town crier cleared his throat. “Is it true,” he asked, “that in your youth, when you came to power in your own kingdom, you unleashed a dragon upon your own citizens?”_

_Rumpelstiltskin insisted that a change of wardrobe would help him fight the second town crier, but it did not. The prince had definitely started seeing things._

_“Is there a bird inside this hall?” he asked--fearful that it wasn’t a bird he saw at all, but rather, his dragon in the distance, come to find him._

_When the third town crier brought up his dragon, the devoted public servant encouraged him to fight back. And to the prince’s own surprise, he did--not with sword, as dragons were typically fought, but with numbers and words, which were far more appropriate for town criers, anyway._

_At the end of the ordeal, she smiled at him, and the dragon seemed very far away indeed. Only decorum (decorum and very recent humiliation) prevented the prince from reaching for her hand. The entire department of Gardens and Outdoor Amusements retreated to the Snake’s Hole Tavern that evening, and when the Wicked Witch of the West presented the prince with a smoking blue goblet full of ice, he was able to laugh it off--though he surreptitiously gave the libation to Rumpelstiltskin instead of drinking it himself._

_Just before the festival, as he and the deputy director toured the half-completed grounds, he thought:_ Pawnee could feel like home.

* * * * * * 

He lay in bed, lights still on, waiting for Leslie to finish whatever she was doing and come upstairs so they could go to sleep together.

There was a point at which he was no longer comfortable sharing details of his project with April, and that point was...well, he’d passed it a while ago. And there was still so much more to write. 

But the next step was finding an illustrator, because he couldn’t draw or paint and the only person he knew who could had once subconsciously immortalized his fiancée as a topless horse, which was a whole level of weird he didn’t want to get back into. 

He turned his head slightly, to Leslie’s side of the bed, where he’d moved Yachter Otter and _Li’l_ Li’l Sebastian (as the horse had been dubbed). They perched atop her pillow, snuggled together. Every morning, she made the bed, smoothing and straightening the sheets with a precision that rivaled the nicer hotels he’d ever lived in. After she folded the flat sheet over the top edge of the cozy worn quilt that had once been her nana’s, she placed otter and horse squarely in the middle of the bed. It gave the room character, she said, and Ben sometimes wondered what would happen if he continued to give Leslie stuffed animals, whether their bed would eventually just turn into some sort of zoo. 

Maybe the custom stuffed animal people would know an illustrator. Or he could try to track down the woman who’d done _Groffle the Awful Waffle_. 

The door swung open, and Leslie entered the bedroom, wrapped snugly in her fluffiest robe. She shut the door behind her and smiled, tilting her head back half an inch. 

“You’re still awake?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Doing what?” 

He shrugged, though the gesture probably didn’t translate while he was horizontal and covered in blankets. “Just thinking.” 

“About?”

“The wedding.”

Leslie smiled again on her way to the bathroom. “Three months,” she called over her shoulder. 

“Yeah.” 

The sink turned on and off briefly, and he knew she was wetting her toothbrush. “Does that seem like a really long time to you?” She reappeared in the bedroom, sans robe, and started brushing her teeth. 

Three months was about half the length of time he’d spent in Washington. It was three to four ordinary auditing assignments, one Pawnee government shutdown, one-third of a City Council campaign, and approximately 150% of the time it took to throw a Harvest Festival.

He had no idea how long it took to get a book illustrated. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would print out all the pages he had so far. 

Tonight, he obligingly rolled onto his back so that Leslie, now moving the stuffed animal menagerie, could make her usual beeline for a certain body part when she finally got into bed. 

He could finish a story in three months. He could finish planning a wedding and finish a fairy tale. It would be no problem at all. 

Less than ten days later, Ben found himself in a beautifully decorated tent on Lot 48--proof that he didn’t even need twenty-four hours to organize a black-tie gala. 

“I just really hate the feeling of not being married to you.”

Ben’s heart gave one big pump, and blood surged to his brain, carrying with it a risky proposition that he _knew_ , beyond reason or conscious thought, was the best idea in the world. 

He drew a breath.

* * * * * * 

“Leslie?”

“What?”

“How do I—is there a zipper somewhere?” 

She shook her head, fatigue making the weight of her bun pull uncomfortably against her scalp. “Buttons.” Leslie pointed at her back as best she could. “See?” 

“Yeah, I see those, but…” Ben had already unbuttoned the back of her dress; now he slipped it off her shoulders, tracing his fingertips down her bare skin to her waist until he hit the cinched part of the dress and stopped. Gently, his fingers squeezed her through the black ribbon. “How do we get the skirt part off?”

Oh, crap. Leslie tried to take a breath. 

“Ann sewed me into the dress.” 

“She _sewed_ you into it?” 

“It was a _make it work_ moment.” Ben was lifting up various sheets of paper now, feeling underneath for any evidence of fasteners. “And you have to admit, she did make it work.” 

He moved from the paper layer to the tulle, thumb sweeping across the back of her thigh. “She did, but I wish I knew how to make it stop working.” 

Leslie would never speak the words aloud to Ann, or to anyone other than Ben, but… “Me too,” she admitted, just as Ben’s hands reached her butt. “Hurry up. I really want to consummate this marriage.” She pulled the top part back up, but only because it was cold in the bedroom. 

Ben groaned. “Well, help me figure out how to get you naked.” 

After a few more moments of searching for some kind of fastening, Leslie came to a sudden realization. Beautiful and perfect as her Ann Perkins of dresses was, in the end, it was just a dress. Her beautiful, perfect dress was keeping her from sharing every inch of herself with her amazing husband—her amazing husband who had made her gala and her park happen, and who had made their _wedding_ happen, and who was currently half in, half out of his tux, with his jaw set in concentration as he searched for a thread to pull loose. 

The cumulative effect was a little overwhelming, and she flushed hot, despite the bedroom’s chill. 

“Ben.” 

“Hmm?” 

Everything was about to bubble over. “You _married_ me. We’re married.” 

He stopped searching and spun her around instead (she helped), pulling her as close as possible. “ _You_ married _me_ ,” he said, just before her lips met his. 

It was just a dress. 

And really, so much the better that it was the Ann Perkins of dresses, because the Ann Perkins of dresses would understand that it was a beautiful, perfect inanimate object and she, Leslie, was a living, breathing, exhausted human being who wanted nothing more than to have sex right this instant. Even more than that, she wanted--no, needed--to have as much of her bare skin as possible pressed against Ben’s before she fell asleep. 

Reluctantly, she pulled away, turning so that her back was to Ben again. It was then that she made a snap decision. 

“Let’s cut it off,” she told him. 

Ben flinched. “ _Cut_ it off?” 

She nodded. “Do you have a better idea?” 

“I guess not,” he said. “But, Leslie, are you sure? I don’t want—”

“Positive. I’ll go get the scissors.” 

“Scissors? Really?” 

But she was gone already, on a mission, hurrying down the hall to their shared office. “Undress yourself,” she called. 

Ben’s desk was closest to the door, and she dove for it. He kept his scissors in the top left drawer, Leslie knew. There was no need to waste time by turning on the light; she merely pulled the door open and began feeling around for them. Her hand encountered a stack of paper, rather than office supplies, which was odd. Ben usually kept his drawers immaculate. But she didn’t want to wonder about that now. 

A few footsteps creaked in the hall. “Leslie?” 

“Coming!” She pulled the papers out of the drawer, threw them on the desk, and felt underneath where they’d been. No scissors. Finally, after a few moments of frantic swiping, she spotted the scissors next to Ben’s pencil cup. 

When she returned to the bedroom (not running this time), she found Ben wearing his undershirt, boxers, and a very pleased expression. 

“Found your seam ripper,” he said, holding it up. 

Perfect. She placed the unnecessary scissors atop her bureau, next to Yachter Otter and Li’l Li’l Sebastian, which Ben had already moved. “Good. Good job, my brilliant, sexy—” She inhaled sharply, letting herself anticipate how the word would feel before she said it. “Husband. My brilliant, sexy husband.” 

It wasn’t the first time she’d called him that tonight, not by a long shot, but time seemed to stop for a moment anyway. Ben shook his head as though he’d just been underwater. If he hadn’t been holding something extremely sharp and pointy, she would probably have flung herself at him. Instead, she settled for a quick butt squeeze and the little thrilling shiver that came from being sure, really sure, that she’d have this effect on him for the rest of their lives. 

“Okay.” He pointed the seam ripper at her waist. “We need to get you out of this dress _right now_.” 

“Agreed.” 

“Where should I…do this?” 

“Ann sewed me in right in back, where the zipper would be.” 

Slowly, carefully, Ben popped a few stitches from the waistband. “Did that do it?”

“It feels a tiny bit looser,” she said, although that might have been wishful thinking. “Keep going.”

“I’m trying not to ruin this campaign flyer.” 

“Ruin it. We can fix it later.” 

“I’m not going to ruin it,” he insisted. “More to the point, I don’t want to accidentally stab you with this thing.” 

So she waited. Patiently. Until a sentence blurted itself out. “Do you think it’s going to feel different now?” 

“What, sex?” 

“Yeah. Sex.” 

“Because we’re married?” He gave a little tug at the waistband, and Leslie felt her skirt release. “No.”

“Really?” 

“Really,” Ben said, slipping the lace from her shoulders again. This time, the whole dress fell down, landing in a semi-stiff column at her feet. “I mean, I don’t feel differently about you than I did this morning, so…” 

“That was good, this morning,” she muttered, stepping out of the dress as she tried to push back the thoughts erupting from somewhere in the back of her mind—thoughts about how _they_ , whoever _they_ were, always said married people had less sex and it wasn’t as good. 

“Do you _want_ it to be different?” 

Leslie shook her head, realizing as she did that her hair was still pinned up. Quickly, she pulled it loose. “No.” 

Ben let out a low “Good lord,” but...nothing else. Not immediately. She watched his hands move towards her. They wavered slightly, like he wasn’t quite sure which part of her to touch first. Then he drew a sharp breath and shook his head a little. His hands made a beeline for the clasp of her strapless bra. Usually she handled these things herself--it was faster that way--but tonight she let him reach around her. She felt the band tighten before it released, and then Ben’s hands were on her, one palm flat against her back, the other on her breast. He ducked in and kissed under her ear, lips warm on her skin, as his other hand slid down to her hose. 

“I think I do have to do that one,” she whispered. 

Ben reciprocated by quickly shedding his own undergarments as she rid herself of stockings. Together, they threw back the covers and climbed into bed.

Then, before she had time to think about anything else, she pulled him as close as she possibly could, her hips pressing towards his. 

“Wait a minute.” Ben pushed back, resisting her, but pressed his lips to her neck and sent one warm hand to caress her shoulder. 

She shook her head. “No. Just...” 

He pushed away and met her gaze. “We’re going to do this the right way,” he said, ending the sentence with a stubborn clench to his jaw that Leslie immediately curled up to kiss. “Right?” His fingers gripped her lightly, thumb running over her collarbone. 

“Right,” Leslie agreed. She could barely get the word out before Ben kissed her. His free hand swept to her face, and he brushed along her cheek, to her ear, down her neck--then lower, onto her body, across her chest, somewhere else. Soon she lost track. A hand wasn’t enough, and neither were the kisses he’d started sending down her chest. She needed more contact, more of his skin against hers, and he was going _so slowly_ , poring over her, accounting for every detail. 

“Ben.”

He vibrated against her ribs, making a sound but not a word.

“Let me be on top.” 

That made him pause and look up at her, all the opportunity she needed to wiggle out from under him. Ben obligingly flipped over, and now she straddled him, pressing her body low against his so that her breasts grazed his chest as he moved his hands to her back, her hips, lower. She ducked in to kiss him, one good, long, hard kiss, before she dropped down.

“Hey. Um…” Ben’s brow furrowed slightly, clearly about to protest that she wasn’t ready yet. 

She shook her head a little. “Just let me, okay?” Release wasn’t important, not yet; _intimacy_ was important. It was important that she feel him, all of him, and that he feel all of her. That was how her body wanted to build tonight. Maybe she’d finish that way, maybe not. Probably not.

She reached down and guided him inside her, moving as slowly as she could stand, the tension so exquisite at first that she almost couldn’t bear it. 

Ben pulled her closer, and she let herself pick up some speed, setting a rhythm she knew he liked. 

He let out a tiny groan and closed his eyes. 

One of the advantages of being on top was that it was so much easier to watch, and Leslie watched--watched her husband (her _husband_ ) sink into the pillow, glanced down to watch her own body as it moved over him, finding the angle she liked best. 

There. Right there. 

She ducked in to start kissing again; this was always better with kissing. Ben’s hands found the smallest part of her waist, then her hips, then her thighs, and back again. 

They were still kissing when he came, a bit more suddenly than usual, but with enough warning for her to slow to a halt and tighten herself around him. 

When he had relaxed again, she sat up, but didn’t move otherwise. 

Ben opened his eyes. “Hey,” he said, with a slightly dopey smile that she returned. 

“Hey.” 

He pulled her down and kissed her again. It would be okay, Leslie thought, if all they ever got to do again was kiss. 

But Ben was gently nudging her off of him. “You’re not done.” 

“Not quite.” 

He gestured towards her pillow, and she obligingly lay back on it. Almost at once, he was over her, one hand slipping under her neck to cradle her head in the way that had always, always made her feel loved. 

She wrapped her own arms around his neck, then stretched one as far as she could manage while he worked his mouth down her collarbone to her breast. 

“I can never reach your butt from here,” she complained. 

Ben half-snorted, sending a little thrill through her nipple, then continued down her body. The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was the part of his hair that always stuck up disappearing between her thighs. 

His tongue circled her, soft and firm at the same time. 

_I get this forever_ , Leslie thought. It came out as a little moan. 

She reached for his hand, which he took. She squeezed it hard, to keep herself focused on how good this felt. 

He sped up a tiny bit. 

“Just like that,” she moaned. 

Ben stopped for a moment, took a breath, and got back to work...a bit more slowly, but he changed direction and added a tiny bit of suction and…

_And_. 

She dropped her knees to the bed, kept her eyes closed, and listened to the sound of her own heart returning from racing speed to normal. It was an uneven transition. Every time Ben moved, shifting the bed, her skin flushed warm. 

Leslie opened her eyes. It was time to clean up and brush her teeth, as quickly as possible. The faster she did those things, the faster she could find out how it felt to go to sleep _married_. 

*** 

She curled against him, tucking herself under Ben’s right arm, which shifted underneath her until his hand found her shoulder. Sleep would come soon--and she wanted it to--but she had to kiss him a few more times first, and breathe in the smell of his t-shirt, and commit every detail to memory. She reached for his left hand, tracing her fingers across his wrist, across his knuckles, until she encountered the thin band of metal on his ring finger. It was warm and smooth and solid under her touch. 

“Mr. Knope,” she said. 

His chest shifted agreeably under her, and she knew he was smiling. He buried his lips in her hair. “Mrs. Wyatt,” he responded. He let out a little breath. “No. No, that definitely sounds wrong.” 

“There are always hyphens.” She yawned through the rest of her words. “If we want.” 

The t-shirt was medium blue, a heathered fabric, not too bright and definitely and well-worn. It was threatening to develop a tiny hole at the hem, she knew. Once there had been a tag at the back, but Ben had cut it out long ago. This was what he had put on the night they got married, this t-shirt and one of his many pairs of blue plaid boxers. He had enough of those that she couldn’t tell them apart, exactly. He hadn’t put on pajama bottoms. 

And she wasn’t wearing anything special either, at least not in the usual wedding-night lingerie sense. But her pajama bottoms _were_ special; they were the ones she’d worn the first night they ever slept together, and her t-shirt was the one she’d loaned to Ben that night, once it became apparent there was no possibility he would go back to his own place. There was some kind of poetry in that, she thought. Poetry, and the fact that Ben thought she was sexy no matter what she wore to bed. 

“Leslie?” 

“What is it?”

“Something you said. Earlier tonight.”

“When?”

“Your vows.” 

She snuggled in even closer, as close as she possibly could, and breathed. 

“Just…” His right arm shifted under her again, holding her close. “You do deserve it. All of it. You know that, right?” 

“Oh, god. Ben...” 

Now the t-shirt had one tear, exhausted, happy tear on the right side of the chest, below Ben’s collarbone. 

Just one, though. She really couldn’t cry any more. 

“Love you,” he said. 

“Love you too.” 

***

A few hours later, her dehydration woke her up. She and Ben had become mostly disentangled in sleep, though one of his arms was still around her waist. Carefully, she pulled free and slipped out of bed, wincing a bit at the cold air. 

She grabbed her robe from the back of the bathroom door and slipped into it. Then she noticed the scissors, atop the bureau where she’d left them the night before. Her dress was crumpled unceremoniously on the floor, but it would have to be fixed later; rustling all that paper would definitely wake Ben up. The scissors, though--she could put those away now, so she stuck them into her pocket before she headed to the kitchen for water. Then, after she’d tidied up the office, she would go back to bed...and stay there for a long, long time… 

Last night, in her haste, she’d left Ben’s desk in near-total disarray. His little cup of pencil clips was sideways, so she righted it and dropped the stray clips back in, one by one. She put the scissors back in the drawer. And this stack of papers she’d pulled out--well, it wasn’t exactly a stack anymore. At least, it wasn’t a very neat stack. 

Though she wasn’t trying to read the first page, she wasn’t _not_ trying to read it, either, and the bolded text at the top caught her eye. _The Prince’s Tale_ , it said. 

“Ugh,” she muttered. “Snape.” 

Then she saw the next words. _Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a young prince in a small kingdom. Like all princes, he hoped that someday, he might rule wisely and well._

And there was a little doodle in the margin. It was a stick figure that was supposed to be Ben, maybe--it had his hair--and he was fighting something that might have been a dragon.

Without thinking about what she was doing, Leslie sank to the floor and leaned against Ben’s desk with the pages in her hands. 

Her own life, parts of it, started unfolding in front of her. A few of the passages almost made her start crying; others made her giggle. She could picture all of it, ridiculous as it was--everything from Chris’s steed Wheatgrass to Ann, the most beautiful good witch in the world, floating through City Hall in an iridescent bubble. 

“Leslie?” called a sleepy voice. 

“In here.” She heard a few footsteps. 

Ben found her there, on the office floor with her robe pooled at her feet, flipping through the stack of loose-leaf pages. She heard him come in but didn’t stand up. 

“I didn’t mean to snoop,” she said, quickly. “I was putting the scissors back, and…” 

He seemed slightly annoyed, but soon his expression cleared, and he sighed. “And that was in the drawer I usually keep them in. I knew I should have hidden it somewhere else.” 

“Sorry.” She patted the floor, and Ben joined her. “I feel like I ruined a big surprise.” 

“I feel like the _wedding_ was a big surprise. Last night happened, right?” 

“It did,” she said, leaning against him. Then she changed her mind and went in for a kiss instead, which turned into several. And then that turned into pushing him onto the floor so she could straddle him, the last few pages of his story still clutched in her hand, unread. 

Ben cleared his throat slightly. “This floor is, uh…” 

“Not as comfortable as bed?” 

“And we need to vacuum.” 

She pushed up. “Not _today_.” 

“It can wait,” Ben agreed. “Can we go back to bed now?” 

“We can.” She stood up, and Ben followed suit. “Here,” she said, handing him the papers. “I didn’t finish it yet. I want to know how it ends.” 

Ben chuckled. “ _I_ didn’t finish it yet. You weren’t supposed to know about this until our wedding.” But he took the papers, as well as her hand, and started leading her back to the bedroom. 

“Yeah, but we had our wedding,” she countered. “So I can hear the ending. You can’t argue with that.” 

“No.” He shot her a grin, the sleepy early-morning boyish one she loved best of all. “I guess I can’t.” 

They both got back into bed, where Leslie propped up the pillows so they could sit up comfortably. Then she placed her hand over Ben’s, leaned back and waited. 

He took a deep breath. “Where did you leave off?” 

“The handsome prince had just decided he was cursed, and then he went back to his inn and took a long hot bath and thought about his feelings a lot.” 

“That’s not his finest moment.” 

Leslie squeezed his hand. “Maybe not. But he’s a pretty good prince overall.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” she said. “I think he’ll get the girl, in the end.”

* * * * * * 

_Next morning, the prince returned to the festival to seek out the beautiful deputy director. No tents had been rent by winter winds, and the corn maze had not frozen over; there was no evidence that an ice dragon had come at all._

_Quickly, he found her. She was just past the entrance, greeting all the townsfolk, and although the prince had betrayed her only yesterday, she welcomed him with a warm smile._

_“Perhaps long ago, there was a dragon,” she told him. “And perhaps then, he defeated you. But look at this festival we’ve built together. It’s yours as much as mine; no dragon has tried to destroy it. There is no dragon.”_

_As she embraced him, the prince knew two things. The first was that the beautiful deputy director was right. The dragon had stopped following him long ago; he had simply hadn’t been able to believe it until she told him so._

_And he also knew that, given the chance, he would fall in love with her._

* * * * * * 

“The end.” It was weird, Ben thought, to hear the words out loud. Weird and ridiculous. But he’d married a woman who pretty clearly appreciated the ridiculous. “Not the _end_ , just as far as I wrote.”

“I love it,” Leslie said immediately. “Let’s get it printed. Let’s finish it, have it illustrated, find a publisher--” 

“Hold on.” He set the papers on his nightstand and turned to face her. “Who else is going to be interested in reading this? It’s just supposed to be for us...oh, um, except April and Andy might know I’m writing it.” 

Leslie smiled. “April’s been up to a lot behind my back lately.” 

“So has Chris.” Ben jerked his head in the general direction of downstairs, where Chris’s framed letter lay on the coffee table. 

“It’s perfect,” Leslie said. “All of it. The letter, the scrapbook, the dress, your story. I just want to put all of it somewhere special, you know?” 

“Well,” he said, considering, “the guest bedroom is relatively undecorated.” 

“But first we have to finish the story.” 

Ben slid down in bed, taking the pillows with him, and wrapped an arm around Leslie’s waist before she could lie down too. 

“They lived happily ever after,” she continued. “That’s the ending. But how do we get there?” 

“Like I said--” he stifled a yawn-- “there’s a lot left. Leslie, can we go back to sleep, please?” 

“Okay,” she agreed, wrestling with his arm until she managed to lie down too. 

He was asleep again within minutes. 

***

For the second time that morning, Ben woke up to find the other half of the bed empty. 

“Leslie?” 

“Are you awake, honey?” she called. “Good. I was just about to come wake you up.” 

Her voice sounded like it was coming from the guest bedroom that doubled as Leslie’s reduced-size scary nightmare hoarder nest, so he dragged himself to his feet. 

Half a pace out of the bedroom, he collided with his wife, who was moving at mostly not dressed. 

“I figured out how to end the story,” she said. “What happens immediately after they start living happily ever after.” 

Ben squeezed his eyes tightly shut, rubbed them, and opened them again. She was still mostly not dressed, and what she _was_ wearing… 

He pressed a hand to her bare back, which was unsurprisingly chilly. “Did you just plan a honeymoon in Hawaii?” 

She nodded, grinning broadly. 

It explained why she was wearing a coconut bra and grass skirt, though not why she owned those things. Ben decided he didn’t want to know. 

“That sounds…” He glanced out the bedroom window. It was definitely a dreary Indiana winter day. “Really great. When do we leave?” 

“Two days. And it’s about fifteen hours of travel time each direction,” she said. “That’s plenty of time for us to get to the happily ever after.” Then she removed the coconut bra and fell back on the bed, arms wide in invitation. 

Ben cast his own shirt aside and joined his wife (his _wife_ ) in bed for the third time in the past twelve hours. 

“I don’t know about you,” he told her, snuggling close, “but I’m already there.”

* * * * * * 


End file.
